Using data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes, astronomers have found evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole. IRS 13a dusty group of stars within the nuclear cluster of our Milky Way galaxy.
Intermediate-mass black holes can form in dense star clusters, either through the merger of stellar-mass black holes or the collapse of very massive stars. Image credit: Sci.News/Zdeněk Bardon/ESO.
Black holes are found in a wide range of masses, from stellar-mass objects with masses of 10 to 100 times that of the Sun, to objects at the centers of galaxies with masses over 100,000 times that of the Sun.
However, there are only a few intermediate-mass black hole candidates between 100 and 100,000 times the mass of the Sun.
“The IRS 13 cluster is located 0.1 light-years away from the centre of our galaxy,” said Dr Florian Peisker from the University of Cologne and his colleagues.
“I noticed that the stars in IRS 13 were moving in an unexpectedly orderly pattern.”
“They actually expected the stars to be randomly positioned.”
“Two conclusions can be drawn from this regular pattern,” they added.
“Meanwhile, IRS 13 appears to be interacting with Sagittarius A*, a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way that is four million times more massive than the Sun, which leads to the orderly motion of stars.”
“However, something else needs to be present inside the cluster to maintain the observed compact shape.”
Using data from the VLT, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), and NASA's Chandra X-ray Telescope, astronomers have found strong evidence that IRS 13 has a disk-like structure.
“Multi-wavelength observations suggest that the reason for IRS 13's compact shape could be an intermediate-mass black hole located at the center of the cluster,” the researchers said.
“We were able to observe characteristic x-rays and ionized gas rotating at hundreds of kilometers per second in the disk surrounding the suspected intermediate-mass black hole.”
“Another indication of the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole is the unusually high density of this cluster, which is higher than the density of any other cluster in our Milky Way galaxy.”
“IRS 13 appears to be an essential component in the growth of the central black hole, Sagittarius A*,” Dr Peisker said.
“This fascinating star cluster has continued to astonish the scientific community since its discovery almost 20 years ago. It was initially thought to be an unusually massive group of stars, but high-resolution data have now allowed us to confirm its component parts, with an intermediate-mass black hole at its center.”
of result Appears in Astrophysical Journal.
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Florian Peisker others2024. The evaporating massive embedded stellar cluster IRS 13 close to Sgr A*. II. Kinematic structure. ApJ 970, 74; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad4098
Source: www.sci.news
